High energy in-band pumped erbium doped pulse fibre laser

Abstract

We demonstrate an inband, core-pumped master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) with a maximum pulse energy of 1.56 mJ at a repetition rate of 1.25 kHz, seeded by an actively Q-switched Erbium/Ytterbium-codoped fiber (EYDF) ring laser, producing 150 ns pulses at 1562.5 nm. To maximize energy extraction whilst minimizing signal saturation effects, a 40 µm Er3+-doped larger mode area (LMA) fiber was used as the gain medium. A 1535 nm single mode fiber laser was used for in-band pumping of the LMA fiber. The output beam quality (M2) was measured to be ~1.6. This is to the best of our knowledge is the highest reported pulse energy for a pulse fiber laser at 1.5 µm with M2~1.6